January 7, 2008 | In: Video Games, XBox 360
Microsoft XBox Live Lawsuit
On Friday, January 4, CNET reported that a lawsuit against Microsoft has emerged as a result of the online connectivity and profile retrieval issues experienced with XBox Live over the holidays. Ina Fried wrote:
The suit, filed in U.S. District Court in Houston, claims Microsoft’s outages represent a breach of contract and negligent misrepresentation for which the software maker is liable. The suit doesn’t claim specific damages, but notes the amount is in excess of $5 million.
$5 million!?!?! Color me stupefied.
I can’t wait to see the details on the damages they are claiming. Increased exposure to family and friends? Fresh air and sunlight poisoning? Reduced risk of carpal tunnel or numb thumbs? I truly cannot imagine what significant grievances may have been caused by the inability to login and play video games online for a week or two – let alone those that justify a lawsuit for $5 million.
Technology happens, folks. Sites and servers become overloaded. The Internet isn’t perfect. I understand that the service interruption may have been inconvenient and frustrating for those affected, but $5 million!?!?
Microsoft issued an apology and is offering XBox Live members a free game download from their online arcade. The details of the game haven’t been announced yet but should be coming in the next few weeks.
2 Responses to Microsoft XBox Live Lawsuit
Charles Plath
January 7th, 2008 at 1:13 pm
The people that got riled up by those issues are the ones on Gears of War that can do no scope sniper headshots with their eyes closed…..wait, did I just say no scope. Well, that outed me. Myself I prefer torque bow.
Don’t get me wrong, I’ll chant down with the man for connectivity issues and take my free game. It better not be pong or something.
Donnie Dietz
January 8th, 2008 at 9:52 am
WOW!! People will sue anybody for anything these days. ALTHOUGH, I will admit when I can’t play on XBOX live and get kicked off the servers I get super pissed. Especially on certain games that will remain nameless…nay, I’ll name them. Call Of Duty 4 & NCAA Football is the worst. Back to topic…In my opinion we have a right to be pissed, to name call, & to generally talk bad about the product or service that went horribly wrong. But here is where it’s interesting on a couple different points. You should get pissed but at the same time understand. Give it some thought. First, people quickly and I mean quickly, forget all the great things that a service provides to them. XBOX live is a phenomenal service that is flag ship in its industry and as it grows to levels that have literally never been seen before there are going to be small problem and technical issue that will take more than a nano second to resolve. Secondly, many blogs responses are quick to express how MS should have known about the huge increase in traffic during and immediately after the holidays…so those people think that MS should have spent millions upgrading their servers and platforms for the short term solution. That sounds totally legit and would have been a good move for any company. To spend tons of money on something that will only be a problem for a short amount of time…wait, that’s ridiculous!!! Of course there will be a large jump in traffic and I’m sure the more popular games might be overloaded at times. But what happens when the kids go back to school and college. Or the free time and vacations are over for the more aged gamer…*clears throat* If MS spends money that’s not in the best interest of the company for the long term then they don’t have the ability to come out with better, more long term solutions to make gaming online better for the next 5 years and not the next 5 weeks. You can’t always make a crazy expensive short term fix that in the end doesn’t justify the means. They will get it worked out soon. Hopefully it will be right when they do. But because there is additional traffic during the holiday season everyone can’t start suing MS…if we started doing that we won’t have any live at all. Then, god forbid, we will have to entertain ourselves the old fashion way. By actually doing stuff…